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Letting out a sigh, she sipped from the mug. Whatever. “Also, where the hell did you get sunglasses?”
“Where the hell do you get sunglasses?”
She wasn’t sure in what fucked-up reality that sentence made any sense at all, but she let it slide. No wonder everybody kept warning her about trying to figure out the wizard. She reached for the cheese, deciding that if she was going to start her day drinking at ass early in the morning, she shouldn’t do it on an empty stomach. “Now what do I do?”
“Don’t know. I’m just here to watch. It’s not my place to change things.”
“Don’t you change things all the time? Just being here is changing things.”
“No, it’s speeding things up. There’s a difference between skipping ahead and changing course.” He waved his own mug of wine as if he were lecturing to a class. “Think about it—if I wasn’t here to confirm that you were still on Avalon and Galahad used a wonderfully un-specific turn of phrase to roll the dice and hope that the magic of the isle knew where you belonged better than Mordred does, you’d be wandering around the woods right now thinking you were in Maine or some shit. Right until you met some sort of magical creature and then you’d figure it out on your own.” He shrugged. “I’ve been bored out of my mind since the battle. So we’re skipping that section and jumping ahead. But I’m not altering the course of anything.”
Rubbing her forehead, she decided that Doc was going to give her a headache. “Sure. Whatever. I guess that makes sense.”
Eod had decided that digging a hole in the damp sand was way more entertaining than begging for scraps at the moment, as he was currently half a foot deep and wagging like a maniac.
She was still on Avalon.
She was “home.”
Home. What a funny word. For the longest time, she had known what it meant. A farmhouse in Kansas, with her mom, dad, their farm animals, and one crochety old stray cat. It had been her friends, her school—and a complete lack of a future.
Then all this happened. Avalon. Fire powers. New friends. And Mordred, the man she loved. The man who had tried to send her away. The island wanted her here. But why? What for?
But now she really, really didn’t know what to do. Going back to Mordred meant that he’d probably try to send her away again with far more specific instructions that time. She was human—aka fragile—and the world was filled with elementals and magical monsters that would probably try to eat her face.
Then there was the fast-approaching war between Grinn and Mordred. One that would guarantee that either or both were going to die. She was pissed at Grinn for what he had done, but she also couldn’t say that she was entirely surprised. It’s not like the demon had been subtle about his mission to separate them and regain his power. He’d only done exactly what he had said he was going to do.
She didn’t want Grinn to die, even if he was a massive asshole. And she certainly didn’t want Mordred to die.
“I have to find a way to stop the war.”
Doc snorted as if to say “Good luck with that.” He topped off his mug of wine and shoved a hunk of cheese into his face.
But that wasn’t exactly how she should start things off. She needed a way to defend herself. Figuring out how not to get herself killed was an important first step before thrusting herself into the middle of a fight to the death between two veritable demigods who hated each other.
Gwen twisted to face Doc. “Can you teach me to use magic?”
“Oh, boy.” He scratched his head. “Fuck. That’s how you want to do this? I gave that option super-low odds.”
“I can’t walk around here with a target painted on my back. Half this place probably wants me dead just for fun, and the other half would probably want to use me to hurt Mordred—Grinn included.” She shook her head. “I need some way to protect myself.”
Eod barked.
Yeah, she was starting to really suspect he could understand more English than he let on. She chuckled. “I know, hon—but you’re just one dog. And if anything happened to you—” She didn’t want to even think about it. It’d get her crying again.
Eod just wagged his tail slowly, and then went back to digging in the sand.
Doc sighed hard and lay back on the beach, staring up at the sky. “You want to learn to tap into Avalon’s magic? Do you realize that’s like asking to lick an electrical transformer? You’re asking me to plug you into something that might kill you. Or worse, you might wind up like me.”
“Bonkers and alcoholic?”
“More or less.”
“Well, I’m shit with a sword.”
Doc snickered. “Yeah, you are.”
She shrugged. “I might not be any better with magic, but it’s worth a try. Either that or I’ll get eaten by some weird frog-eyeball-shrub-thing.”
